No-So Measure Putting Taxpayers on the Hook For Nearly $100 Million Passes the Council; Council President Urges Downtown Ponzi Scheme to Continue

This morning, I watched the debate on the North of South proposal backed by the Ballard administration. Basically you have a developer, Buckingham, which wanted to do a development on the near south side nearly Lilly.  Buckingham took the mixed use project proposal, which includes new hotel space, apartments and retail, to private lenders.  It was deemed so risky that no lender was willing to back the project at any price.

Councilor Angel Rivera

So what did Buckingham do?   It hired top Republicans, including then Marion County Chairman Tom John and long-time Republican insider Lesa Detrick, to lobby the Mayor's office to back the proposal as a "public-private" partnership.  Taxpayers would be on the hook for the financing of the project, now to the tune of nearly $100 million.  Of course the Mayor's office immediately signed on to the project. Republican councilor Jeff Cardwell agreed to sponsor it.
Republicans dangled a job creation estimate and MBE opportunities to try to pick up Democratic support.  Of course, they didn't actually make the job creation a contractual requirement, nor did they specify what types of jobs, mandate that they would be full-time or how much they would pay.  While such a demand for such assurances would be inappropriate in normal circumstances, when we taxpayers are being put on the hook for nearly $100 million, our councilors at the least should be demanding more than vague creation estimates.
Some interesting things I noted about the council debate.  First, of all, someone needs to tell Councilor Angel Rivera to stop talking.  Rivera, the consummate cheerleader of every tax/fee increase and hair-brained spending project proposed by Mayor Ballard, praised the administration putting taxpayers on the hook for $100 million for a development that every lender found as too risky.  He said it was a "great idea." Seriously conservatives, do you want that guy defending taxpayers?

Council President
Ryan Vaughn

The measure passed 16-12.  It would have failed 15-13 had it not been for three cross-over Democrats, the two usual suspects, Jackie Nytes and Paul Bateman, and a newbie to supporting Mayor Ballard, Jose Evans.  Republican Councilor Aaron Freeman was absent.  Republican Councilor Lutz voted against the measure.

Finally, I found Council President Ryan Vaughn's closing comments most telling.  (Not sure why a presiding officer in a legislative body is not only involving himself in a debate on a proposal, but closing it.  That is highly inappropriate.)  Vaughn said that in order to keep afloat previous downtown development subsidized by taxpayers, we need to keep pumping more taxpayer dollars in.

The law enforcement authorities have a term for that.  It is called a Ponzi scheme.